President approves smoking ban

Buffalo State College President Aaron Podolefsky has decided to move forward with a recommendation from the College Senate banning the use of tobacco on campus, making Buffalo State a smoke-free campus by January.

Podolefsky has placed Vice President for Student Affairs Hal Payne in charge of seeing the smoking ban carried through.

 "I charge the vice president for student affairs with the responsibility of overseeing the implementation of an education and awareness program to begin on Sept. 1, 2011," Podolefsky said in a statement released on the smoking ban. "I further charge the vice president for student affairs with the responsibility of overseeing the development of a policy to be distributed and implemented by Jan.1, 2012."

The ban will be rolled out in three stages, Payne said, with an effort on changing how smoking is viewed on campus.

"We wanted to make clear that we are not going to try to immediately implement a hard enforcement policy," he said. "What we're really trying to do is create a cultural shift at Buffalo State as we move from an environment where smoking is controlled on campus, to an environment where the campus will be smoke free, tobacco free."

The plan was announced at the College Senate meeting on Sept. 13. William Raffel, vice chair of the College Senate made sure the senate would stay abreast of what was happening with the plan.

"This has to come first to the senate for response," he said, referring to decisions made on how to implement the ban.

The senate will receive regular updates on the plan, Payne said.

Going smoke-free will not be easy for some students, Payne said, which is one of the reasons the three stages for implementation were developed.

"For many people, that's a really wrenching change, so we want to go through these stages where the culture changes, not just people are forced to adhere to a new regulation," he said.

A committee is being formed to determine how to go forward with stages two and three of the ban, Payne said.

The first step is happening now, and includes education on the negative effects smoking can have on your health, and your wallet.

"We are using this fall to implement programs that provide information on smoking, on the harm it can cause to individuals as well as other individuals who are affected by the smoking," Payne said. "There are a lot of issues there, including the burden of cost for tobacco on a college student struggling to educate him or herself."

The second stage, set to begin in January, includes soft enforcement of the ban, Payne said. This mostly has to do with the shift in culture on the campus, and how students view smoking.

"It's less a matter of what enforcers do, and more a matter of what people say to each other," he said.

The third stage involves hard enforcement of the ban. Moving to stage three will depend on how similar programs have worked at other schools. The University at Buffalo's smoking ban has been a source of information on what works and what doesn't, Payne said.

"One of the things we've learned is that there are a lot of complicated issues as you move into enforcement," he said. "At the end of the day, what really works is a commitment to a smoke-free campus during the soft phase."

While the plan calls for three stages, it's possible the third stage will not be implemented. The culture shifting on campus is more important than anything the school could do to enforce the ban, Payne said.

"This policy will rely very heavily on a compact among members of this community - faculty, staff and students - that we all agree to not smoke on campus," he said.

Michael Canfield can be reached by email at Canfield.Record@live.com.